Naples business owner won't be homeless after receiving BP claim

Candi Cook, owner of Candi's Creative Crafts at Tin City in Naples, FL, sells to a loyal customer who comes back year after year. Ms. Cook recently received a denial to a BP claim she filed in August and will be homeless at the end of December because of it. When customers ask why her stock is so low, she tells them the story of her claim of compensation being denied by BP. Michele AnneLouise Cohen/Special to the Daily News

A 23-year-old Naples business will remain open due to a reversal of a BP Gulf Coast Claims Facility decision to deny the owner's claim.

"The store will be here for another 23 years," Candi Cook of Candi's Creative Crafts in Tin City on Fifth Avenue South exclaimed Saturday after receiving the full $24,000 she had requested in an emergency advance payment in late October.

Cook credited a Daily News report published last week, which ended up in the office of Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, for the reversal of the denial.

In the Daily News report, Cook said she had decided to do everything possible to keep her business open despite the claim denial, including selling her home and sending her 16-year-old son to live with his grandmother in North Florida.

Cook ditched those options after receiving the claim Friday. She vocally stood her ground and ensured the future of the small business and its employees' jobs despite numerous critics, among them dozens of naplesnews.com commenters insisting Cook was seeking an unwarranted handout and encouraging her to shut the place down.

"This was something that I went into that was making money, and we were coming in through the economic downturn," Cook said of her experience after purchasing the business in 2008.

Immediately after the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, Cook said "you could just see the numbers go down," and noted that three other Tin City businesses had received similar claims.

Cook initially filed a claim for losses she incurred during May and June, and received a $2,100 check from BP.

The emergency advance payment claim for six months of losses was denied because her submission didn't meet the criteria for such a claim, according to a Gulf Coast Claims Facility letter Cook received.

"In weighing these factors, the GCCF has determined that you did not demonstrate that you lost profits or income as a direct result of the spill," the letter said.

"It was all documented," Cook said. "It was the exact amount I lost."

Cook said she visited the claims website after an initial intervention by Sink's office and found the claim "had changed from denied to being re-evaluated."

Cook then visited the site Thursday night expecting the claim to again be denied.

"I truly didn't believe it. It said paid," Cook said. "To have that and be able to save everything, it was great. It was phenomenal."

BP could not be reached Saturday to explain the reversal.

"They were not going to re-evaluate any cases. All the sudden they changed their minds after that news article," Cook said. "Luckily, I had the State of Florida on my side."

At her shop, which sells name brand hats, sandals, moccasins, jewelry and other items, most of them made in the U.S., Cook said some customers have come in to support her decision to fight the denial.

Cook said one woman came in, confirmed the shop was the one described in the article, then "picked up a pair of sandals, brought them up to the counter, and said ‘I hope this helps.'"

"Quit rolling over and playing dead," Cook said to other business owners in a similar position. "You don't have to. You can stand up and say something. People just don't want to stand up anymore."